The Election Commission is expected to announce on Monday the schedule for the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in several states, including Bengal, sources said.
According to the sources, the poll panel will prioritise four states and a Union Territory where elections will be held next year. These are Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
Local body polls in Kerala, due later this year, are expected to be notified after the state election commissioner (SEC) meets the recognised parties on Wednesday.
At two recent conferences of chief electoral officers, deferment of the SIR in places having local body polls has been considered, because of the unavailability of staff to conduct an SIR.
The Kerala Assembly had last month passed a unanimous resolution against the SIR, but that will not have a bearing on the poll panel’s decision.
The EC’s announcement on Monday — if it includes Kerala — will put the onus on the state to provide staff for the SIR as the commission’s notification will precede the SEC’s.
The commission is expected to defer the SIR in the Himalayan states where inclement weather is likely to prevent house visits by booth-level officers.
EC officials have been tight-lipped on Assam, where the state government has demanded that the SIR be held only after it publishes the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The expansion of the SIR’s ambit comes with the Supreme Court yet to pass a verdict on the pleas challenging the validity and implementation of the drive that concluded in Bihar last month.
The petitioners have questioned the EC’s authority to verify voters’ citizenship on the basis of certain documents, arguing that it would lead to large-scale disenfranchisement.
The top court has not stayed the EC’s decision to conduct the drive across India, and has largely left the SIR guidelines untouched.
The top court has, however, nudged the poll panel to accept Aadhaar as a valid proof of date and place of birth.
The EC is accepting Aadhaar as proof of identity, but continues to insist on other documents to verify voters’ citizenship.
In Bihar, voters who figured on the 2003 electoral list — following the previous intensive revision — were not required to submit any additional documents.
The EC is expected to allow this relaxation for voters who were on the electoral list in any part of India after the previous intensive revision in that place, irrespective of their current place of residence.
For example, someone on Bengal’s electoral list of 2002 who is currently a voter in Delhi will not need any additional documents to remain a voter in the national capital.
The poll panel has also examined demands to expand the timeframe of the SIR. Bihar’s enumeration drive was wrapped up in a month, with critics blaming the short duration for errors in the rolls.
A total of 3.66 lakh “ineligible electors” were removed from the draft list during the SIR in Bihar. Appeals against the deletions were minuscule, which the EC has projected as a metric of its acceptance by the electorate.
However, the poll panel is yet to reveal how many suspected foreigners it reported to the authorities as part of the drive. One of the EC’s stated reasons for conducting the SIR was the removal of “foreign illegal immigrants” fromthe rolls.